Prof. Dr. Daniel Hromada
Human and Artificial Intelligence
Seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Thursdays, 10:30 - 13:30 h: 19.10., 2.11., 16.11., 30.11., 14.12.2023, 11.1., 25.1., 8.2.2024, Grunewaldstr. 2-5, room 110

Registration on Moodle starts 16.10.2023 / Anmeldung auf Moodle beginnt am 16.10.2023: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2016
Moodle Enrollment Key / Einschreibeschlüssel: intelligence

What is ‘intelligence’ and how is it defined by different people and cultures? Is there only one ‘general’ intelligence thanks to which humans and machines solve problems or is it more appropriate to speak about combinations of ‘multiple intelligences’ – emotional, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, visual, logical, mathematical, bodily, moral, narrative, etc.? Can we speak about intelligence independent of the cultural and socio-economical context within which its acts and is embedded? Do organic intelligence (OI) and artificial intelligence (AI) have something in common or are they fundamentally and irreconcilably different? In order to explore potential answers to these questions, we will look into the history of cognitive (psychology, anthropology) and computer  (informatics, cybernetics) sciences, we will read stories about ‘idiot savants’ and children raised in wilderness and brilliant minds of the past, in order to ultimately ask our own AI systems to tell them something about themselves.

This seminar is the second part of the ‘Art, Cognition, Education’ seminar series whose objective is to introduce art students to main concepts and principles of six canonic cognitive sciences (e.g. linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, computer science/artificial intelligence, anthropology, philosophy).

Requirements for the ungraded Studium Generale credit points: Artistic creation addressing the student’s own understanding of the difference between Human and Artificial Intelligence. And: Ability to pay attention and readiness to put away one’s smartphone for three hours every two weeks.

Daniel Devatman Hromada is since August 2018 UdK’s Juniorprofessor for Digital Education at the Einstein Center for Digital Future. Born in 1982 in Bratislava, he holds bachelor degrees in humanities from Charles University (Prague) and linguistics from University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis; a master degree in artificial and natural cognition from Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris). In 2016, a successful defense of his Thesis “Evolutionary models of ontogeny of linguistic categories”, entitled Daniel to carry a double doctorate from both Slovak Technical University (cybernetics) as well as University Paris 8 – Lumieres (psychology). Father of two children, he is a founder and first senator of oldest Slovak digital community kyberia.sk.
In the majority of his publications, Daniel Hromada addresses topics as diverse as natural language processing, developmental linguistics, computer vision, semantic vector spaces, machine learning, evolutionary computation, computational rhetoric, narrative enrichment, roboethics and machine morality. His main design project at UdK/ECDF is the construction of a ‘digital Fibel’, that is, a speech-based, book-like digital artifact for cognitive enhancement of 7-10 year old children.